A postscript has been
added to this story along with a picture of what the island looks
like today.

The August 21st issue
of the Milwaukee Journal "Wisconsin Magazine" contained
a short article about two abandoned islands in Northern Lake
Michigan. The pictures shown of the islands, particularly of the
Pilot Island foghorn and machinery building, was a tombstone and
like a tombstone , doesn't show that the island was once alive
for seven or eight months of the year, every year. The following
short article attempts to recreate a few moments of the living
history of Pilot Island.

PILOT ISLAND
LIGHT STATION - 1955

Photo By - Jack A.
Eckert

It was January 1955 and
times were tough. Out of High School I put in a 3-1/2 year "Kiddie
Cruise" in the Coast Guard. When I got out I had no success
landing a good job. To buy a couple of years and hope for a
change in the economy I volunteered for another short hitch in
the Coast Guard. They were looking for warm bodies with some
experience at the time. After they accepted me in my former rate
I drove my 1949 Pontiac to the Cleveland District Office to get
sworn in and receive my assignment. This took about a week. They
sent me to Group Sturgeon Bay for further assignment.

I reported in to Sturgeon
Bay Canal Lifeboat Station and the Group Office for duty. There
were about sixty men there on Temporary Additional Winter Duty.
Within a few days I learned that I was being assigned as the
Station Engineer of Pilot Island Lighthouse off the tip of the
Door County Peninsula.

Liberty (time off) was
good on Winter Duty. I commuted back and forth to Waukesha every
weekend until the second week in March. Joana came back with me
and we took a motel cabin for a modest price in Sawyer, across
the river from Sturgeon Bay, until I was ready to go out to the
Island.

During the last week of
March it was time to move out of the winter quarters and open up
the islands. Arnold "Jake" Jacobson, Jimmy Allen, and I
went up to Gill's Rock on the tip of the Door County Peninsula
where we met the Plum Island Station 40 foot Ice Breaking Motor
Lifeboat. Our boat escorted the Washington Island Ferry in case
they got caught in the ice until we got to the North Side of Plum
Island. They went into their port and we tied up at the Lifeboat
Station. It was to early to open up Pilot Island so the three of
us stayed at Plum Island and performed various duties and stood
radio beacon watches.

The ice finally cleared
out of Deaths Door Passage. On a calm, sunny, cool day the Plum
Island station boat took the three of us out to Pilot Island to
open it up for the season. We moved in right away and began to
put the various systems in operation. The only real problem was
the water pipes were frozen up. We spent a day thawing them out
with blow torches until we finally got good water flow through
them. Now we could at least go to the toilet.

Pilot Island is a five
acre island marking the northern limit of Deaths Door Passage.
The complex consisted of the light house with the light mounted
on the roof, a carpenter shop, a paint locker, and a foghorn
& machinery building.

The two compressed air
driven, two tone, diaphone, foghorn's were the loudest on the
Great Lakes. When we started them they would vibrate the
buildings and rattle the windows. How we ever slept with all of
that racket I do not know. The sound became greater when the
"Lakers" approached the shoal South of the Island in
the fog and I often wondered if they would miss the South end of
the island and that shoal.

The duty stretches were 23
days on the island and 7 days off every month. The Coast Guard's
policy was to rotate personnel on and off duty so there would
always be at least two men on the station at all times. We stood
live 12 hour watches. The only thing we watched for was the fog
coming and going which told us whether or not to start sounding
the fog horn. The guys on watch at Plum Island would tell us if
the light was out because they could see it easier than we could.

There was really plenty to
do on the station. At least once a week we mowed about two acres
of lawn with hand push mowers. That in itself took almost a full
day to do. We painted the four bedrooms in the half of the
dwelling we occupied. The other half was unoccupied and we kept
it broom clean. The machinery, lens room, etc. all needed
attention. We actually waxed the decks in the machinery room. At
my age today in 1995 of 63 I would be delighted to have a job
like that. At the time I was newly married, 23 years old, and I
didn't like it to well.

We cooked our own meals.
We ate together usually rotating the cooking and clean up chores.
When thrown into that situation you either learned to cook or you
went hungry. We shared our food bill and bought our food from a
grocery store in Sister Bay by telephone. The groceries would be
sent out to us by a passing fisherman. I don't remember how we
ever paid the grocer but we must have or we would have really
been hungry.

Jimmy was still a teenager
and was thinking of marrying a Sturgeon Bay girl. Jake was an
older Boatswains Mate who was from the area and took Lighthouse
duty in his stride. He had a gaggle of children and probably was
glad for the peace the island provided.

Jake was about 40 at the
time and was a real pain for the two of us "kids" to
live with. We perceived him at our tender ages to be an old fuss
budget. Nothing we ever did was right. But Jake had a flaw! He
was very impressionable. It took three days to talk Jake into
being sick, convincing him he belonged in the hospital. Jake left
the island about the second week we were out there. He didn't
come back until after I left Pilot Island for good in July.

At our young age we didn't
look ahead and that put Jimmy and I in a bind. No time off! I
could talk to Joana fifty miles away by telephone in Sawyer but
couldn't see her. The Group Office must have felt sorry for us as
they sent Billy Six on temporary duty over from Plum Island in
mid May to stand in for Jake long enough to let Jimmy and I each
take a week off. Billy left and we still remained in a bind. The
answer for me was to bring Joana out to the Island for a visit.
We arranged through our friendly grocery store for the fisherman
who brought the groceries to bring her out on his boat. So there
she remained for several weeks until Phil Peterson, the Chief of
the Plum Island Station, told me to get her off the island. He
was not going to be responsible for her because she was pregnant
and he was worried (rightfully so) about getting her off if
something went wrong.

Our electric power came
from a battery bank powered by a pair of Kohler generators and
was direct current. It powered the lighthouse, the water pump and
the lighting systems only. Our refrigerator and stove ran on
propane gas and our heating was with fuel oil. I had a used TV
set Joana and I bought for $35.00. A Milwaukee Base technician
came up to the island to check something or other out. He offered
to lend us an AC power converter to run the TV with. Jimmy and I
made a TV antenna out of copper tubing and mounted it on top of
the lens room cupola. The TV came in crystal clear from as far
south as Milwaukee and from the Michigan side of the lake. Life
improved because we now had TV. The wind really blows up there
but it really wasn't that much of a chore to climb up on the
cupola and straighten out the bent copper tubing every other day
or so. Within a few weeks one of the Lakers sailing by turned us
in to the Ninth District for altering the characteristics of the
light with the TV antenna. It did not conform exactly to the
description in the Great Lakes Light List. That brought us some
company and almost got the two of us court martialled. The
District technician complained that the drain on the battery bank
running the converter would shorten the useful life of the
batteries. He wanted to know how the converter ever got there and
I lied when I said, "it was always here and I found it in
the Carpenter Shop." Surprisingly he didn't take away the
converter when he left. As soon as he left the island we moved
the antenna to a pole we stuck in the ground and continued to
watch TV. We only received Green Bay after that and they must
only have had Channel 2 in those days.

Pilot Island became
enjoyable during Joana's stay. She brought "Wicked" our
German Shepherd with her. "Wicked" cleaned the pine
snakes off the East side of the island and ran the big birds off.
She had the run of the island. Nobody could sneak up on us as was
the Plum Island crew's great

Jack and Wicked, Fog Signal Building and
Tankage in the Background

sport. "Wicked" would meet
them, and never was a dog so aptly named. After that when their
station boat came over they would call up first and tell me to
lock up the dog. When the Buoy Tender "Woodbine" came
to refuel us "Wicked" wouldn't let anybody on the dock
until I got there. That was where "Wicked" should have
lived the rest of her life. She was never tied up and had the run
of the place.

Joana became our full time
cook and helped us with the cleaning and the chores. She painted
and shared our watch duties. It was a bit tough on Jimmy because
I had a woman and he didn't have one there.

We have many pleasant
memories of Pilot Island today even though we, and I in
particular, didn't spend that much time there.

Good fortune appeared! An
Engineman named Ivan Hutton who was from Washington Island wanted
to get back into the vicinity. He was stationed at the Milwaukee
Breakwater Light Station. The Coast Guard's policy was to let us
exchange stations with approval as long as we paid all of our own
moving and transfer expenses. On July 13th, our first wedding
anniversary, I left Pilot Island for good and we moved back to
the Milwaukee area.

PILOT ISLAND -
1999

Photo Courtesy of
Marvin Arial Photography

POSTSCRIPT: It is hard to believe
looking backwards 44 years that this had been my home. Trees and
scrub growth had been located only at the extreme ends of the
island. Two acres of the five were kept mowed. Gone are most of
the outbuildings except the Fog Signal building. The roof has
collapsed on that. People who had once lived on the island have
been displaced by large pine snakes.

How many ghosts are in this old
boarded up Keepers House, trapped there until everything that is
left crumbles into dust.

Old cutters are often towed out to
sea and sunk by gunfire, which is a fitting end. Old lighthouses,
out of the way, with their historical significance forgotten
suffer the ignominy of rotting away in silence like an old,
useless, farm machine in a back field.